Keith Hudson's Musings

Blackmail attempt by Turkey

A deal was outlined last night in Brussels between the EU and Turkey that — apparently — achieved everything that Turkey wanted, including accelerated ‘consideration’ of Turkey’s application to join the EU. Such is the confusion that the EU has of itself — though not yet of its core civil service ideology as a future super-state — that an increasingly undemocratic Turkey has been able to provisionally blackmail the 28 countries of the EU.

The idea is that all migrants crossing to Greece from Turkey will be returned to Turkey where they will be assessed in reception camps. Once some are accepted as genuine asylum seekers they can then be sent on legitimately into the EU. It’s only provisional because the leaders of the EU countries will be meeting again next week to confirm how they will share the ‘legal’ Syrian refugees between themselves. If they agree, of course. They haven’t agreed to take in more than trivial numbers so far, except for Germany. But even in Germany there is a rising number of people joining right-wing street demonstrations and might take a lot of the wind out of government sails even as soon as next week.